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“Do you blame her?” Leah said. “How can we
blame her reaction to that which she doesn’t understand?”

There was agreement on the faces of the
others.

“I’m not blaming or judging her,” he said.
“But we may have to get her to control the situation, if not, this
could get dangerous.”

They exchanged other ideas on the subject,
and Dylan glossed over their plans for the following afternoon when
they would try to make first contact with David. He encouraged them
to rest, for tomorrow would require full focus, and tomorrow would
come faster than expected.

Chapter Eight

The drive home was
uneventful except for her quick stop at the liquor store for
another bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She had drained the last one dry
and now had to replace it. This quick excuse would fend off the
creeping guilt that would ambush her later. Her nerves felt like
dancing electric cables twitching and sparking inside her, while
her heartbeat was replaced by a jackhammer’s rhythm. She had to get
a fix, even though her nurse’s instinct knew that alcohol would aid
in the attack upon her central nervous system.

She arrived home and inched the front door
open, skeptical as to what she might find. Darkness descended early
this time of year, but she could still see as she switched on the
lamp. No strange shape stood facing her, no objects strewn about,
nothing was disturbed. She went straight to the computer.

It remained the way she’d left it hours
earlier. There were no missed e-mails or instant messages, and no
odd numbers registered on the caller id. She phoned the hospital,
giving notice of her sick leave—effective immediately. She sent
Marcia an e-mail, telling her everything that happened at the
university.

Then she grabbed a cold Budweiser from the
fridge and poured herself a shot from the bottle she’d brought
home. The shot went down with a strange, quenching fire that
cleared the cobwebs from her mind, and the beer chaser splashed a
cold, bitter torrent that smothered the flames in her throat. She
felt better already, sitting and squashing thoughts of tomorrow
because all that mattered was the here and now.

A few hours later, she pulled the last of the
six-pack from the plastic rung that she let fall to the floor. A
mellowing haze clouded her, and she felt comfortable where she was,
cradled in a high, hard-back chair at the kitchen table. Then, the
phone rang.

She held the swig of beer in her mouth, and
the can in her hand was paused in mid-air. Her eyes were set,
refusing to look at the phone. She swallowed the gulp and lowered
the can to the table. The phone continued to ring. She glanced at
the caller id window; the name seemed to match the urgent
ringing.

Logan, Susan; MD

“What the hell does she want?” What did she
want now, to tell her that she knew about her sick leave and that
grief was destroying her life? If she only knew what was happening
right now, her years of studying Psychiatry would seem useless.

The phone rang six times before her voice
mail answered, and when she dialed her voice mail moments later,
there was nothing. Tracy’s eyebrows arched in curiosity. Susan
Logan had not bothered to leave a message...odd. What was so
urgent? Her eyes squinted at what seemed like puzzle pieces
floating in the fog of her mind. She was missing something, but
what? She replaced the phone back on the cradle.

* * * *

Dr. Susan Logan sat at her office desk, the
phone sinking slightly in her hand as the look of confusion spread
an unspoken question across her face. She replaced the receiver,
sighed, then crisscrossed the fingers of both hands and propped
them under her chin. Why is Tracy not answering? Why the sudden
sick leave?

Tracy Kimball had become a patient of hers
following a car accident that killed her fiancée and almost killed
her. David had drove home that night, because Tracy had too much to
drink, and the survivor’s guilt had overwhelmed her. Tracy never
finished her voluntary sessions and now Susan had been studying her
from afar.

The latest news regarding Tracy was dismal.
Recent reports called her a “twitching bundle of nerves.” Some even
questioned her sobriety, having caught the fleeting scent of
alcohol on her breath, not to mention the recent episode in a dying
patient’s room, where they found her immobile, paralyzed in some
state of shock or fear. All of it, so uncharacteristic and unlike
one of the best nurses at University Hospital. All of these
instances had spun through the hospital rumor mill, and were soon
spit out--back to Susan Logan.

Dr. Logan’s youthful appearance had continued
after surpassing the milestone of sixty. Her ageless face set with
bubbly blue eyes and bobbed blonde hair had conditioned those
younger into thinking of her as a peer. She depended upon this
asset in her case study of Tracy Kimball, but somehow it had
expired. Tracy was now avoiding her at all costs and Susan had to
find out why.

She picked up the phone again and pushed the
redial button. The endless ringing became pointless, and this time
she didn’t wait for the voice mail. She replaced the receiver and
thought for a moment, then glanced at her watch. Marcia Ross was
still on duty; she would catch her now, before she signed out.

* * * *

The following morning began the same way the
last one did, a shot of pain wincing through her head as she
carefully lifted her eyelids to greet the day. It even felt like
the same hangover as her head throbbed, her body ached, and her
breath reeked like the smell that escaped an aging, empty bottle.
The glowing numbers of the alarm clock-radio read 11:05; the team
would be here in less than two hours. She rose, regretting the
night before, and stumbled to the bathroom.

She soon emerged, having showered, spruced
up, and doused her eyes with Visine, not long after spewing
volcanic eruptions that flooded the toilet with a sea of vomit and
alcohol. Hot, black coffee was what she needed now; it would
straighten her out before they arrived.

The aroma of the brewing coffee filled the
room and when it was done, she poured a cup and sat at her usual
place at the kitchen table. It was now 11:45, and the purring of
the coffee maker died away, leaving only the maddening silence that
forced her into a thriving rush from the table.

She turned on the radio, unable to stand
another minute of silence amid the absence of music or television.
She was less afraid than before, and she couldn’t avoid everything
forever, in fact, didn’t the team want her to go about as normal?
She pressed the power button on the space maker radio.

Her fingers rolled the dial, catching quick
bits and bleeps of announcer’s voices, classical music, and static,
until she arrived at her destination--Classic Rock.

A song was playing, and her instinct
recognized its haunting, melodic, guitar riff. Blue Oyster Cult was
belting “Don’t Fear (The Reaper),”and in an instant, a backdrop of
memories, mostly of David, played out in her mind like a movie
along with the tune. He loved the guitar work on that song. Tracy
listened as to a melody of a time gone by.

...And she had no fear...She ran to
him...And they started to fly...C’mon baby...

A quick flash of her hand pushed the power
button off. It wasn’t unusual to turn on the radio station and hear
a favorite song of his, but she didn’t want to hear
that
song, not right now. Now wasn’t the time to confront memories; her
head weighed a ton.

She ignored a slight chill that swept the
living room, and she turned on the TV, switching back and forth
between the two twenty-four hour news channels, surfing to find the
more interesting story. The political attacks and counter attacks
of Democrats and Republicans, as well as the sharp, critical blows
toward a sitting President, made her feel somewhat normal
again.

It was 12:15 when a crashing wave of static
interrupted. It filled the screen at every corner with its famous,
cigarette-ash colored checkerboard, leaving no further signs of
life from the nation’s capital. Her heart was pounding again in her
ears, which now became a common occurrence.

She stared, mesmerized by the mish-mash of
gray screen, and listened to the static roar with its electric
flood of rushing current. Her ears honed on the sound of it, the
harsh monotony of nothingness. Somewhere in the background of that
nothingness, a small squeaking sounded. She heard it; it sounded
like someone tuning for the right channel or frequency.

SQUEAKSQUEESQUEESQUEE

Then the vacuous roar of the static changed
somehow; it no longer sounded sharp, or urgent, but subdued.
Another sound was coming closer and closer, building until it
silenced the static with the sound of a gale force, locomotive
wind, rushing fast through a hollow tunnel.

Tracy’s feet gave out from under her, and she
plopped to the floor, pressing the volume button on the remote as
high as it would go. The approaching sound grew louder, as if
traveling from some remote destination. Her readied ear was close
to the speaker. She thought she would hear radio transmissions, but
what she heard, was the sound of a voice.

“No,” the voice said.

She stopped breathing, realizing that again,
a voice was emanating through the television. This time, it was
quick. It was a voice that soared like a comet with a rush of
static trailing behind it.

“Can’t,” It said.

A slight hum and echo reverberated when the
voice spoke. This voice wasn’t David’s; this was a woman’s voice.
She reached behind her and grabbed the notepad and pen she’d kept
on the coffee table. Dylan had told her to write down anything that
happened, so now was the time.

Why couldn’t they have been here earlier?

She began scribbling until the voice that she
would forever recognize, interrupted.

“NO! TRACE—”

It was David’s voice, quick and rushed.

“STOP—” Him again. She felt her heart break
between the poundings.

“Oh, God!” She’d heard the tone of her own
voice. It was more like a question...God are you there? What is
happening? A part of her wondered if God was watching.

Suddenly, the static became normal again,
raucous and harsh as though it had never been broken. Then, as
quickly as the static had come, it had died. Her screen became a
functioning television again, with a CNN reporter wrapping up
before the computerized cutoff ended for him.

“No word yet on whether or not the bill
will pass the Senate, but the President will be ready to sign when,
and if, it does.”
the commentator’s perfect hair and the high
definition blues and reds in the background resumed, ending the
ghostly episode that held her in full grip only a moment
earlier.

She breathed in and out, calming herself. She
turned her head to the living room window; outside a blue van
pulled up in front of the house. The team had arrived, too
late.

Chapter Nine

Outside, Dylan and
Brett emerged from the front of the van and walked to the back,
opening the rear doors and removing what looked like video cameras
and other apparatus she couldn’t identify as she peeked from the
window. Leah and Sidney exited the back seats; Leah was pulling her
long, blond hair into a ponytail, while her counterpart oversaw the
unloading of their cargo.

Tracy opened the door, the pad still in her
hand, and began waving to get their attention. If only they’d
arrived five minutes earlier.

“It’s happening!” she called from the front
porch, and they sprinted towards the door, hearing the desperate
urgency in her cracking voice.

Each of them had backpacks. Leah was carrying
a thick notebook in one hand and a small, carrying case was
strapped around her opposite arm. Sidney was carrying a larger,
heftier, duffel bag, while Dylan and Brett moved quickly behind
them, both tech whizzes following with hands full.

“Please hurry,” she said, her voice
quivering, her hands shaking as she held the screen door open.

They stepped single file into the modern,
ranch style abode and looked around.

“There...the television,” she said, pointing
to the set that was now announcing the latest from America’s
Newsroom. A look of interest spread across Brett’s face.

“Tell us what happened from the beginning,”
Dylan said. Leah began taking notes as Tracy told how she was
watching TV, and then how the static interrupted and changed.

“The sound it made scared the hell out of me.
At first, I thought the set was going to blow...then there was this
rushing...like turbulence...and then I heard him...them...I
mean...I don’t know...”

She gasped, flustered, and blurted out a
frenzied flurry of random words strung together in frustration, her
voice climbing in confusion.

“It’s all right,” Leah said, clasping her
hands in hers. “Just take a deep breath, and tell us what
happened.”

“This time, I heard a woman’s voice, and then
I heard David’s. I heard the words ‘no’ and ‘can’t,’ and then he
almost shouted, loud this time. He called my name again.” She told
them how the voices spoke—warped, but fast.

Brett honed his ears to her every word, his
eyes never straying from hers. This became his territory, and he
thought on how to proceed.

“Tracy, what you heard is what we call an
EVP,” he said. “It stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, which
refers to unexplained voices that are either picked up on
recordings or heard through various electronics. The EVPs that are
identified as spiritual or ‘ghostly’ are just as you described.
They are often ‘warped,’ as some may call it, and fast.”

The room spun at this confirmation.

“Come on, sit down,” Leah said.